MegaMan Powered Up Trading Card Game May 2006 - August 2006

A few years ago in 2006 after the initial buzz of the "MegaMan Powered Up" PSP game by Capcom died off (it wasn't as successful as they thought it would be, sadly) the fandom started to die down. I, personally, thought Powered Up was one of the MegaMan series' best games to date.

Because of this drought of fandom, I wanted to do something to remind people how awesome MegaMan was and how cute the Powered Up characters were! Taking note of the success (with fans, anyway) of the previous TCG I made, I figured I'd try my hand at it again but with a new series. This time, however, I was a little wiser and a little more talented as far as my graphic design abilities were concerned. :) I wanted to make a fun, simple Trading Card Game based on MegaMan Powered Up and that's exactly what I started doing.

Please note that there are some cards with official Capcom artwork on them and Capcom retains the rights to that artwork. The rest of the artwork on the cards for new characters, items, and options was all done by me and I think most of them turned out pretty well.

Unfortunately the game isn't complete. The idea wasn't as well-received as I'd hoped it would be and it also seemed I forgot an important part of working with licensed characters - I can't sell the cards! Although this seems to be a given, I never thought about it as far as how I'd get these cards out to people - I'd have to print them, which would cost a lot of money, but I wouldn't be able to charge people for them which would make me very broke. In the end I had stop the project - but a lot of cool cards did come out of it and I feel it would be a shame not to post them online.

The rules of play are described in detail in the next few paragraphs, but if you'd rather jump to view the cards themselves feel free to use any of the anchor links below.

The Rules

The Goal

The goal of the game would have been something along the lines of "Defeat 8 of your opponent's robots to win!" or "Collect 8 Victory Tokens to win!". I never actually decided on which one it would be, but you get the idea. Also, your opponent would win if you, at any time, had no robots left on the field.

The Main Idea

The main idea of the game, is that you would start out with these cards called "Robot Droids" and then you'd be able to attach Power Up Cards to those droids to make them stronger. The most important (and also coolest) part of the game is that depending on what parts you attached to your Robot Droid, you'd actually be able to upgrade it into a totally new robot! For example, take a normal droid (Model 001 for example) and attach two "Speed Booster" Power Up Cards to your robot, and it would have the ability to be upgraded into QuickMan by some means. I never got around to figuring out how that would work - either by means of an "Upgrade!" card or something - maybe as an automatic thing? Who knows - I never actually finished the game, sadly. :(

Card Types

There would have been a few card types to play the game. First and foremost would be "Robot" cards. These cards come in two types - Robot Droids which would be the building blocks of all other robots in the game, and Robot Masters which would be the upgraded versions of those droids.

The other type of cards would be Power Up Cards which would essentially be cards you could attach to your robot to make him or her stronger. These, of course, would have the side effect of also being able to upgrade your robot into a totally new character! :D It's a bit foggy now, but I'm pretty sure I had a limit on how many Power Ups you could attach - something like 2 or 3 and the Power Ups would have to be discarded once the Robot Droid had been upgraded.

The last type of card that was available were the Option Cards. These came in two varieties - standard and "Stage Select" option cards. Standard Option Cards would let you do something (draw a card, for example) and then be discarded. The "Stage Select" Option Card would change the environment in which you played - sometimes making it easier, or maybe even more difficult, for certain types of robots to preform.

Other Bits

In addition to all the other junk, each robot would have been one of 15 "types" - Heat, Cold, Elec, etc. This type would determine how well the robot performed up against other robots on the field.

Each robot is weak to a particular type of attack and each attack states what type of damage it does - WoodMan for example would take twice as much damage from Heat type attacks than any other.

Another significant marker is the "model icon" located on each robot's card. In the first expansion there would only be Wily and Light models, but Cossak would have eventually made his way into the game as well as a few other new characters. The model icon identifies not only who created the robot but also the robot's affinity. For the most part this doesn't have a direct effect on gameplay, but occasionally an attack's effects or Option Cards would only apply to a certain model of robot. "Light's Assistance" may have only healed Light-model robots, for example. This addition would have advanced the strategy element of the game.

Lastly, you'll notice a "Promo" icon on one of the cards (QuickMan). Seeing as this game was originally meant to be distributed online, I thought it would be cool if certain sites got their own exclusive cards. Joining as a VIP member of the MegaMan Network forums, for example, would grant you access to a download of that QuickMan card - the possibilities would have been endless.

The Cards

The first version of the cards I created used a horizontal layout (I was trying to be different). At first I thought it was a cool idea but it proved to be too awkward to hold and I later started redesigning the cards into Version 2 which is down a little further on the page. You'll notice some of the cards do not have artwork - this is because I created the bases first and then draw the artwork later.

Aftert the first version of the cards didn't feel very good in my hands (I printed out some test ones to see how they'd work), I decided do go with the age-old method of making them vertically oriented. Hey, if it ain't broke don't fix it, right? Lol. Further down are the ones I completed in the new style before I ceased production of the card game.

Download & Use

While I don't think anyone would actually want to play these in their current state, I'm totally okay with it if you do. You'll have to download and cards yourself, but what you do with them and how you play is totally up to you. All I ask is that you don't post anywhere else on the web without permission and that you do not try to claim them as your own or otherwise steal credit.

You can download all the card images and the card backing together in either a ZIP Archive or RAR Archive format or download them individually in the gallery below.

In closing, I hope you found the card game interesting because I had a blast making it. :)